This is the Manics' catharsis album: its lyrics were written by Richey Edwards, who gave them to his bandmates just before his disappearance, and are heard here for the first time. It's taken the band 14 years to put music to what turned out to be his last words, and you can see why - composing songs around Edwards's often-impenetrable thoughts must have been one of their toughest challenges. The result does them, and him, proud. Forgoing the arena-rock of recent years for something close to the barbed punk of their Holy Bible era - though less disjointed this time, and studded with hooks you could hang a feather boa from - they've made a complex but very listenable record. The focus isn't on Edwards's mental state, though there's ample evidence of it ("I'd like to go to sleep and wake up happy"), but on making a passionate rock album that honours the past yet is very much of the present.